I’m starting it out in IMHO, recognizing that it might have to be moved.
Let’s say no solution is reached WRT DACA, no way that both sides can agree on to make it okay for the Dreamers to stay in the USA. How do those who want to see the Dreamers deported picture the deportation of 790,000 individuals actually playing out? If they’ve given it any thought at all, which is a long shot anyway.
Do the anti-Dreamers envision INS officers scouring towns, college campuses, businesses, etc., locating the offenders, putting them on buses headed for the Mexican border without so much as a packed suitcase? Do they drive the buses across into Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Acuna, or Tijuana and kick the people off the bus, and that’s that?
Maybe they’ll put them in cattle cars on trains and send them to the Mexican border. No, that wouldn’t play well in the press. (Like any of this would!)
What about people whose parents came from South and Central America? Does the INS fly them to the airport in their family’s country and kick them off with a “Hasta la vista, baby?” What if the parents come from two different countries? Who pays for this?
I’m not in favor of deporting the so-called Dreamers, but this is not much of a problem. We’d do it the same way we typically deport ~400,000 illegal aliens per year. We could up that by 100,000 and, and it might take some time, but it’s doable. I’m not aware of many (any?) folks who think this will happen instantaneously.
I think the idea is that they no longer have a “get out of jail free” card, not that they all get rounded up and sent home within some specified time frame. It’s also meant as a disincentive for folks to bring children here expecting they might get to stay do some future legislation.
We also have an advantage with theach Dreamer that they registered with the federal government. So that should make it easier than finding people who never told us anything.
And as to specifics, all of the above. INS has routine charter flights to countries in Central America repatriating a planeload at a time to various countries. Buses or vans are sometimes used to deport to Mexico, though some buses continue past the border to drop repatriated persons further inside Mexico.
One hopes that there is still a modicum of due process in this country, and that they still have the right to their day in court, barring other serious immigration violations. Right now in Chicago, if you go for an initial hearing and need time to prep for, say, an actual merits hearing ion an asylum case, your merits hearing will be ~ 3 years form now. That’s how backed up the courts are. My office has clients who actually want quick hearings because they believe they will win on the merits of their cases, but no such luck.
It might be that the DHS simply looks elsewhere and decides not to make dreamers a priority. Of all the undocumented immigrants, dreamers are the most widely supported, enjoying at least some measure of sympathy among conservatives. The lawsuits against DACA didn’t really seem to be telling Obama’s DHS to remove Dreamers, but rather that they shouldn’t keep issuing or adding new Dreamers to the list. I suspect Dreamers are relatively safe provided they find ways not to engage in serious identity theft that hurts living natural-born citizens. Trump has Muslims and MS-13 gang bangers to catch first.
What really matters isnthat, as I understand it, they can’t work. So thousands of people–from retail workers to teachers to business consultants will all have to go to mowing lawns and cleaning houses for cash. I know these people. I work with these people. There’s no comfort in knowing they won’t be shipped to the border the day after their permit expires. They will lose their work, they will be on a path to lose their homes, to becoming at best a burden on family, at worst homeless.